


Soar

by Lassarina



Series: Lucis Ante Terminum [7]
Category: Final Fantasy IV
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-24
Updated: 2008-06-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 02:08:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassarina/pseuds/Lassarina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is her element.  He would do well to remember that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soar

The view from the top of the Tower of Zot is absolutely breathtaking. Purple-hazed mountains surround him, reshaping the horizon according to their own curves. On a very clear day, he can see the cleared land that surrounds Baron Castle, far to the southwest. Even now, in the last days of summer, snow tips the mountains and blends into the dense forest that cloaks their slopes.

He comes here not for the view, but because it is the one place in the entire godforsaken tower that does not reek of magic, that does not buzz in his ears and crawl along his skin with its stench of metal and deep caves. Up here, the wind is fierce and swift, lashing him like Valvalicia's claws, and he can breathe freely instead of choking on the despair in Rosa's cell or the weight of Golbez's displeasure, suspended over his head like a sword, wanting only an excuse to surround him in excruciating pain.

He gathers his muscles and jumps again, as he used to upon the battlements of Baron Castle. Up, up, up he soars, reaches the highest point of the jump, and hurtles down to drive an imaginary spear into an imaginary foe. The wind slips sly fingers through the gaps in his armour, teasing at his clothes and hair beneath the plates of steel. He ignores it, and continues his training.

He has been leaping from the center of the tower, but this time he chooses to aim for its eastern edge, glittering bright with the touch of the rising sun. When he was in training for the Dragon Knights, their commander would often have them jump with the intent of landing less than a spearhead from the edge, the better to teach them control. Then, it was very like that a fall from the battlements would severely injure him.

If he misses today, it is certain the fall will kill him.

Up, up, up in to the lightening sky, a fast fierce flight like one of Rosa's arrows, but he will not think of Rosa now, and at the top of the arc he turns and plunges downward, aiming for the thin sharp line between light and shadow where the sun touches the edge of the tower. He envisions night-black armour there, and his bright spear piercing through it. Unlike Fabul, this time he will strike a death-blow.

His knees and ankles flex to absorb the impact. His toes are less than a finger-width from the edge.

Laughter, bright and vicious, swirls around him in the sharp gusts of wind. One particularly powerful gust strikes him like a hammer blow, sending him staggering forward, and at that point the weight of steel and the pull of the earth combine to drag him over the edge of the tower, cursing her even as he tries fruitlessly to halt his fall.

Golbez built the crystalline sides of the tower as flawlessly as he might; indeed, the tower was raised whole-cloth from magic and not constructed as a mortal structure might be. Though Kain grabs at the sides, there is no purchase for him, and his gauntlets scrape across the crystal with a horrifying screech that makes his skin crawl. He can hear her laughing still as she swirls around him, and is not much feared that she will permit him to die (if only for that Golbez's rage at her carelessness would be no small thing), but the farther he falls, the more he wonders.

The wind swirls around him, a tornado in miniature, and just before he would have struck the ground, it catches him and buoys him up, sending him flying back up toward the top of the tower. The sudden reversal of direction leaves his stomach heaving, but he will not give her the satisfaction of seeing his reaction. He grits his teeth and waits for her to grow bored, as inevitably she does; wind has little staying power, and she is ever easily caught by some new toy.

She sends him in a dizzying spiral all round the tower, flying down toward the ground and then soaring up until even the tower itself is barely a tiny dark spot beneath him. So high up, it is hard to breathe, and he finds himself growing lightheaded.

The wind seems to solidify, forming itself into the curvaceous shape that she favours these days. Her hair whips around him, lashing against his armour.

"So boring to be earthbound," she says, and her voice is the high thin scream of winter storm-winds.

He says nothing, merely turns his gaze away from her face. She has been testing his patience sorely of late, sending her voice rippling through his rooms late at night or going to Rosa's cell for the sheer joy of causing trouble. Today it seems her capricious changes of mood have driven her to be playful.

Her voice shifts, softens, now the gentle rustling of a summer breeze through the orchards. "Not so?" she asks. "I thought you, of all, would appreciate the thrill of flight."

Perhaps if he plays her game, she will set him safely upon solid earth once more. "It is beautiful," he says, and it is not a lie; from here, the world lies at his feet, blue and green and brown and white, like the maps he used to study with his tutors.

She has ceased flinging him about, and now merely holds them both balanced. The wind slips through the gaps in his armour, through the weave of his tunic, and slips cool and firm over his skin. She kneads at his flesh as though it were her fingers and not her element that so touches him, and leans forward as though to bite at his neck. Finding it protected by his armour, she releases her grip on the wind, letting them both plummet toward the tower even as the cool pressure runs over his chest for all the world like her hands--even sharp at the tips like her claws.

Faster they fall, and faster, until she stops them suspended mere inches above the tower. Were he to stretch out, he could touch the crystalline tiles of the roof. When he tries, though, the wind tightens around his limbs, holding him still. Her claws slide easily over the plates of his armour, loosening the fastenings so the steel crashes to the top of the tower, leaving him pinned and defenseless beneath her.

He snarls at her, struggling against her grip, but it seems wind is firmer even than steel when its lord so wishes it. She curls her fingers in a beckoning gesture and the wind yanks him upright so fast his head snaps forward on his neck.

"Disrobe," she says curtly, and her face is as remote as the summoner village he helped Cecil destroy.

The pressure of her insubstantial grip on his wrists fades, and he obeys her; for all that she is a hell-born fiend, he finds a certain kinship with her and her love of the open air. When he floats before her birth-naked, she smiles and edges closer. Her claws prick against the side of his neck, then run slowly down along his collarbones and across his chest, pressing hard enough for him to feel their razor-sharp points, but not quite enough to draw blood.

Generally, that comes later.

She circles her claws around his nipples idly, watching with interest as his body reacts. When he reaches for her, she snarls, and wind wraps tight around his limbs once more. Her claws press harder against his skin, pinching his nipples delicately between their sharp tips. He hisses at her and struggles against her grip, unsure if he intends to touch her or hit her, and she bares her fangs in a fierce smile, tightening her claws until they pierce his skin.

She licks away the tiny drops of blood that bead crimson on his skin, and laughs. Her hair whips around him, tiny stinging lashes on his skin, while her claws trail downward. He tenses, bracing himself for when those sharp points will dig in and draw blood, and prays that she does not damage him irreparably.

She pauses, her claws stroking him so lightly as to raise goosebumps on his skin, and studies him intently. "Do you do this with your mage-girl?" she asks, and there is a cold light in her eyes.

"I have not touched her," he snarls, pulling at the wind that holds his limbs fast, "and you will leave her out of this."

She laughs like the howling of the winter wind outside Baron Castle. "So quick to defend her! So quick to be her virtuous knight! And yet you are so eager to come up here with me."

"I was already here when you joined me," Kain says, and sucks in a breath sharply when her claws trail feather-light over rigid flesh.

"I have told you, I am everywhere there is air," she says, and circles her claws around the base of his cock. He can barely breathe, terrified that she will dig those razor points into him, and almost wishing she would so that the suspense would cease. His cock throbs in time with his pulse, with the delicate patter of her claws as she taps some pattern against his flesh.

Her claws slide down his thighs, digging in enough to draw blood once again, and she bends to lick the blood from his skin. He wishes she were not blonde, wishes she had been wrong that he desires her for this very reason.

She loosens the grip of magic on his limbs at the same moment the world inverts and she brings them both cartwheeling up into the sky, soaring upward until the air is thin and hard to breathe, and then she wraps herself around him, sleek and hot, her claws digging fiercely into his back. She is not troubling to restrain him, so he fists his hands in her hair, yanks her head back and bites at her throat. She laughs, letting them both plunge toward earth as she moves against him, slow and hard. She arrests their fall before they hit the tower, rising once again on the currents of the wind.

It is terrifying and exhilarating together.

He knows he is bleeding from the gouges her claws have left in his back, for he can feel the slow slippery trickle of blood against his skin. She brings her hand to her mouth and licks his blood from her claws, shuddering when he bites her throat hard enough to leave marks on her moon-white skin. He pulls her hair harder, forcing her head back until her spine arches like a drawn bow, and slides a hand between them. In this form, save for her claws and fangs, she is built just like other women he has known, and she makes a growling sound deep in her throat when his fingers press between her legs. He has lost all sense of up or down, knows only the rushing shift of air currents against their skin. Far from them, he can see the peaks of the mountain range; if she loses control, he will plunge to his death on the rocky slopes.

He laughs at the thought, and works his fingers faster against her. She snarls, sinking her claws into his shoulders, and arches hard against him. He can feel the tension gathering into a single, focused point, and he buries his face in the curve of her neck when he comes.

Abruptly the cool flesh against him seems to disintegrate, shattering into a whirlwind. He drops like a stone, tumbling head over heels toward the mountains below him, watching the green-clad slopes rush closer as though he is outside himself. The wind slaps at him, sends him reeling off course.

So this, then, is the thrill of true flight, without her power to support him.

Strange, that he is so detached.

She re-forms around him, locked together as they were before he began to fall, and the air closes warm and tight around them before depositing them lightly upon the roof of the tower, not five feet from where she tossed his armour.

She is yet atop him, and she leans back to examine his face as though he is some strange new breed of creature.

"I see all that the wind touches," she says, and he is reminded of the time when she said that to him after Fabul.

"You are the wind," he says, surprised to find his voice hoarse.

"So I am." Her face looks distant, lost. "The Dark Knight lives. He climbs Mt. Ordeals."

She rises without another word and dives off the side of the tower. Kain simply lies on the crystal and laughs hollowly.

It seems he will have his second chance at killing Cecil after all.


End file.
